If you want to take an astronomy class (or have a free space in your schedule) PLEASE take one of Pryal's classes! His enthusiasm is contagious. He offers plenty of extra credit. He also offers helpful review slideshows for exams!

Highly, highly recommend taking a class with Matt Pryal. As a non-astro major, I just took astronomy for the science requirement. But this is a super-engaging class, with a super-engaging professor. I'll likely end the course with a B+ (my own fault, there's plenty of extra credit opportunities). But an A- to an A is achievable if you max out his extra-credit system throughout the semester. Prof. Pryal is one of those professors who clearly cares about his students and subject (way more than my average UVA professor). I genuinely think his astronomy class is the best way to fill your science requirement.

Professor Pryal is fantastic and this is probably the best class to satisfy the CMP requirement for humanities majors. I ended up not doing great in the class, because I slacked off on homework, but it's decently easy. There's a fair amount of random work like homework, labs, and a group project, but it's manageable. Professor Pryal clearly cares a lot about his subject and his students which makes the class more fun!

Such a fun class. The professor is so enthusiastic about the content, which makes every lecture incredibly engaging and entertaining. Sometimes I wish I didn't have to take notes so I could just sit in lectures as if watching a video essay. He's also very funny, and has Friday tie-days as another review mentioned, where sometimes he gives out candy to people who celebrate by wearing a tie or a tie-dye shirt. Genuinely makes me want to take more classes with him

That being said, it's deeply annoying the cutoff for an A in this class is a 95 as an introductory course. This isn't an impossible grade, but I realized way too late that it is in fact near-impossible if you don't max out your Star Stuff points (the extra credit system). My advice to anyone taking this class in future semesters is to do star stuff posts consistently to max out as much extra credit as possible. Aside from that, the tests are pretty easy, you're allowed a double sided letter sized cheatsheet, and the homeworks are fairly forgiving with multiple attempts on each question. The labs are also pretty easy and graded very leniently. Some of the other reviews say the math is not as easy as it seems, but the class must've been reworked or something because we only really saw plug-and-chug type math, which everyone I spoke to thought was simple.

TLDR: Awesome class & professor, definitely enroll. Make sure to do all the extra credit though

Very enjoyable class. All lectures were engaging, fun, and every time I attended, I felt like I learned something new and interesting. Unfortunately, I am personally a relatively lazy person and I didn't show up to all lectures.

The textbook isn't very helpful for the class. It feels like it's written at a middle-school level, and it doesn't help you answer the homework questions very much. Matt's lectures will teach you everything that you need to know. Awesome class!

Matt is a great instructor. He's only a couple of years older than us and he's very relatable. He is obviously very passionate about astronomy, and wants his students to do well in his course. People have said that the math in the course is difficult and the rubric says that you can easily get a B without reading the textbook, but I easily got an A in the course without much outside reading (I am a STEM major for reference). He has this thing called "Friday tie-day" where he wears ties to class and tells a story about how he got the tie, most of which are related to astronomy, and he also encourages his students to do the same, which honestly made me excited to show up to class. He is a very accommodating professor and easy and fun to talk to after class and over email. I will be taking more courses with him in the future

Matt is a decent lecturer but what I like most is that you can tell he really wants us to succeed. He made the second exam and final open note which is why I was able to do well. The stuff is super interesting, but I will admit I didn't care to listen that much because I took this class for an easy A. I wouldn't say it IS an easy A, but it's not super tough to get one. The math is probably the hardest thing about this class. Overall, I would recommend if you this class fulfills a requirement.

Pryal is super nice and he is very accommodating when it comes to attendance. I found his lectures to be pretty boring since he was just reading off the slides. He is enthusiastic about the topic. I found this class to have more math than I was expecting as a humanities person. The 4 labs are super easy and so is the weekly homework. I found the exams to be stressful with the short answers being very hard compared to the multiple choice which made me get solid 83-88s on the exams. I finished with an A- and I would say this class is an easy A- but not an easy A. If you are in the humanities and looking for a super easy science class, KEEP LOOKING this is not the class. The math was harder than you think and they are easier classes. Pryal is boring and sitting in class is a waste of time. #tCFspring2022

I LOVED THIS CLASS. I was nervous going into it because I'm a humanities person, and this was my first STEM class at UVA but it was fine. Pryal was awesome - he's young and still cares about being a good professor. There were four labs (all pretty easy), two exams, and a final. There was a weekly homework assignment that wasn't too bad that took about 1.5 hours. The first exam was a bit difficult, but I studied hard and did well. He made the last two exams open note and open book, so everyone did much better. Pryal really cared about everyone's progress, and the topics were so interesting. Stars, the Big Bang, aliens, etc. I recommend this class! Also we didn't have quizzes, so I think he changed that based on the older reviews.

Absolutely loved this class. The instructor is new but he is super interesting and engaging, but that can vary based on the subject matter. This class talks about black holes, galaxies, nebulas, all the cool stuff in Astronomy in my opinion, but also it does have some math based elements but never super difficult and you always have all the formulas you need. I never read the textbook and you don't really need to aside from the homeworks which usually take a little less than an hour a week to complete. The tests are pretty easy as long as you attend all the lectures and do the homework, and the labs are usually quite fun just make sure you don't forget to do them since they are difficult to complete last minute. This class left me with a very good impression of the Astronomy department.